This past week the internet was bristling with anger and intense hatred for Apple.
the Apple marketing machine graphically illustrated just what their new slim tablet is capable of doing, obliterating countless old and clunky artefacts of creativity.
Accompanied by the 1990 song by Sonny and Cher “All I Need is You”, the ad takes us on a quick trip down a nostalgic memory lane.
The camera pans over an old record player, a ticking metronome, an arcade game, a chalkboard, an upright piano, tins of paint, a handsome-looking trumpet — all incredibly neatly positioned in a giant industrial press that slowly clamps down on all of it in a rather spectacular manner.
Everything then gets flattened and crushed into oblivion.
Guitars explode, glass shatters everywhere, smoke billows and paint squirts out of the clamped jaws of the press. It’s utter destruction, and then the massive steel plates open once again to reveal the new ultra-thin and powerful Apple iPad Pro.
As far as pure advertising goes, the ad is incredibly impactful and does an excellent job of communicating the benefits of the new Apple product. It’s beautifully shot, the grading is wonderfully rich and cinematic, the choice of the Sonny and Cher song gives the commercial a fun tone without the flagrant destruction coming across as too aggressive.
If this ad were to have been presented in an advertising school, the student would have been immediately headhunted by a leading agency and given a corner office with a dedicated parking bay.
Public outcry
Apple fans, as well as other people with opinions, absolutely hated it and made their strong feelings repeatedly known.
Not since Bud Light completely alienated the entire length-and-breadth of the conservative bible belt in the US by misjudging the selection of a transgender influencer has the ad world seen such a swift rebuke.
In amongst a riot of online blathering, Elizabeth Hurley’s ex, Hugh Grant, publicly lashed out at the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, on social media. He labelled the ad as an example of “the destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley”. This is some strong fighting talk from a man who has built his entire persona on personifying “floppy”.
Justine Bateman, who played Mallory Keaton in the 1980s hit sitcom Family Ties (now a prolific filmmaker), proclaimed that the ad was a metaphor for how technology is literally “crushing the arts”.
She linked her critical remark to a 2017 New York Times op-ed piece that explores how historically authoritarian regimes actively throttle the freedom of society to create art in their destructive campaigns for the control of the human spirit. She figuratively linked the Apple iPad ad to the work of the Third Reich, which is a tad hyperbolic.
It was pointed out by many other commentators that the iPad ad was ironically in direct contrast to the much-loved